This week's survey question

Last week, a group of activists advocated on behalf of eliminating proof of residency requirements when Wisconsinites register to vote. An analogous resolution was approved at last week's Democratic Party of Wisconsin State Convention, and by the United States House of Representatives. 

This resolution would allow voters to complete a change of address online or by phone and individuals to register to vote without providing any documentation proving his or her residency. Wisconsin law defines a proof residency document as, "a document that a voter provides with his or her voter registration. A proof of residence document proves where the voter resides." 

Wisconsinites who register to vote by mail, in-person their county clerk's office, or a polling location on election day, must provide documents proving that they reside in the jurisdiction in which they are registering to vote. According to the MacIver Institute, "Voters do not need to provide proof of residence when registering online through MyVote--if their names, addresses, Wisconsin driver's licenses or ID numbers, and date of birth match the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicle's database. 

This resolution, if passed in Wisconsin, would make it easier for individuals registering same-day to commit voter fraud, and virtually impossible for local election officials to verify voter identification information.  

As noted, the United States House of Representatives approved this motion, "The For the People Act," earlier this year. The legislation is dead upon arrival in the United States Senate, where Republicans have a 53-46 majority. 

Please, take a minute to answer my one-question survey regarding the elimination of proof of residency requirements when registering to vote.

Click here for my survey

Legislation 

This week the Assembly Committee on Family Law held a public hearing on nine bills drafted by the Legislative Council Study Committee on Child Placement and Custody, that I chaired last summer. The public hearing is available on WisconsinEye, if you are interested in learning more about the intricacies of each proposal.

Testifying with Senator Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee), on behalf of our child support and custody legislation.

The Legislative Council Study Committee on Child Placement and Custody was tasked with reviewing current standards for determining physical placement and child support obligations and was comprised of five legislators; eight public members, including a judge, court commissioner, private family law attorney, domestic violence advocate, father's rights activists; and county child support agency directors. Diverse membership on the committee allowed us to hear from multiple stakeholders. It was important for the committee to receive feedback from both practitioners and parents that would be directly impacted by policy change--both of which were represented on the committee.

Today, I testified on behalf of the following bills:

Assembly Bill 93

Assembly Bill 93 is a piece of Uniform Law Commission legislation, which has already been enacted in 14 states. This legislation establishes a process and standards for temporary delegation of custodial responsibilities when a parent is deployed in military or national service. During deployment, that parent may grant his or her custodial responsibilities or visitation to stepparents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or adults who have a parent-like relationship with the child. The bill also establishes a time frame for termination of these temporary custodial responsibilities when the deployed parent returns. The timeframe is incumbent upon the length of deployment.

Assembly Bill 94

Assembly Bill 94 specifies that courts may not consider incarceration to be voluntary employment in determining a parent's earning capacity, which reflects a change in federal law.

Under the bill, child support will be automatically suspended with no arrears, if the following criteria are met:

• The sentence is longer than 180 days
• The parent does not have income or assets from which child support could be collected
• The other parent or any child is not the victim of a crime for which the parent is incarcerated
• The parent is not incarcerated for nonpayment of child support (child support obligations will be reinstated 60 days after incarceration ends).

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 36 states already allow for child support modification or suspension during incarceration. The Milwaukee Prison Project, conducted by UW-Madison's Institute for Research on Poverty, concluded that arrears tended to be lower among fathers whose child support orders had been modified while incarcerated. The likelihood that the custodial parent would receive payments following the payor parent's release increased. There is evidence of improvements in child support outcomes, such as, lower arrears and higher child support and payment amounts. 

What is more, the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Child Support Enforcement, the accumulation of substantial arrears discourages a parent's presence and makes it likely that the parent can begin to provide for the child after leaving prison. 

Testifying before the Assembly Committee on Family Law

Assembly Bill 95

Assembly Bill 95 allows courts to approve contingency placement agreements. These would lead to modifications to legal custody or physical placement based upon feuture events that are certain to occur with in two-years' time. For example, a change in a child's school or extra-curricular activities.

Based on feedback during the study committee process, contingency placements cannot be based on anticipated parental behavior modifications, such as, completion of domestic violence or AODA treatment.

Current limitations on modifying orders favor the status quo on placement arrangements, but these limitations are not realistic in situations when change in life events and a child's need can be anticipated in the near future.

Assembly Bill 96

This bill updates current Department of Children and Families' administrative rules relating to child support formulas to reflect that shared physical placement arrangements are now very common and should not be considered special circumstances.

Assembly Bill 96 is a technical cleanup bill that codifies current practice in statute. Statute should be updated to reflect that shared physical placement arrangements are no longer "special circumstances." This bill will help avoid switching to a new methodology for calculating child support payments. It is important to note that formulas used to calculate child support amounts are not changed.

Assembly Bill 97

Assembly Bill 97 adds a new statement to the general principles for child custody and placement. It states that any order presumes that the involvement and cooperation of both parents regarding the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of the child is in the best interest of the child. The study committee wanted to emphasize that cooperation in parenting and involvement by both parenting parties is usually in the child's best interest.

Assembly Bill 98

This legislation specifies that if a court grants less than 25 percent physical placement to a parent, a finding of fact must be entered as to the reason greater placement with said parent is not in the best interest of the child.

Currently, parents have no understanding of why are not being awarded placement. Assembly Bill 98 allows parents to have clear knowledge of which factors are determining placement. Providing the finding of facts to parents will provide a blueprint to take the necessary actions to improve future placement rulings.  

Additionally, Assembly Bill 98 reorders the statutory best-interest factors, but specifies that the factors are not necessarily listed in order of importance. The bill eliminates two considerations: the stability in placement and availability of childcare service. These two factors kept placement in place without allowing for parents to adjust to a new way of life after their divorce.

Assembly Bill 99

Under current law, parents are required to file a parenting plan with the court only after mediation fails or if mediation is waived. Assembly Bill 99 requires parents to submit proposed parenting plans to family court services or the mediator at least ten days before mediation. 

The parenting plans must include more focus on co-parenting, rather than financial arrangements. The study committee heard testimony that co-parenting proposals are effective in helping parents to focus on a child's need and determining arrangements that work best for the family, without litigation. The effectiveness of the current parenting plan process is largely lost and this bill remedies the current system's failure.

Assembly Bill 102

Under Assembly Bill 102, the Department of Children and Families would no longer be able to include variable housing costs for determining gross income for child support. The department would continue to calculate gross income using veterans' disability compensation benefits and military basic allowance for subsistence and housing. 

Assembly Bill 103

In July 2018, the Department of Children and Families changed an administrative rule and would no longer collect birth costs from cases where the father is a member of an "intact family." The Department of Children of Families views an "intact family" as one in which the unmarried mother and father live in the same household. 

Assembly Bill 103 reverses the DCF rule and would allow for collection of birth costs from this group of fathers. The DCF rule change has unintended consequences, as fathers from "intact families" typically have higher incomes and the ability to repay birth expenses than those from "non-intact families." The rule change disproportionately benefits fathers who are most able to repay their debt to the state. 

Under the Birth Cost Recovery program, the father may be ordered to pay back up to one-half of the birth expenses. The order must not exceed five percent of three years' income. The Birth Cost Recovery program takes the father's ability to pay into the account. The court may use a reduced sliding scale that limits the father's contribution to a lower percentage. Additionally, no interest or penalties accrue on these orders. 

Eighty-five percent of Birth Cost Recovery funds are used to reimburse the BadgerCare program for Medicaid-funded births and fifteen percent are distributed to county child support programs. Additionally, there are federal matches on these funds. 

Like the child support program itself, the Birth Cost Recovery program stems from the notion that parents should be responsible for their children, not the taxpayers, when they have the ability to pay.

If you have questions regarding any of these proposals, do not hesitate to contact my office. 

D-Day Anniversary

Today, June 6, 2019, we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Operation Overland invasion of France. On this day, and every day, we remember the brave soldiers who stormed Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Gold Beach, Juno Beach, and Storm Beach and in so doing, liberated hundreds-of-thousands of French citizens from Nazi occupation. 

Dr. Stephen Ambrose, a Wisconsin native and one of the nation's foremost World War II experts, wrote of the Normandy invasion, "Operation Overlord, the invasion of German-occupied France in June 1944, was staggering in its scope. In one night and day, 175 thousand fighting men and their equipment, including 50 thousand vehicles of all types, ranging from motorcycles to tanks and armored bulldozers, were transported across sixty-to-one-hundred miles of open water and landed on a hostile shore against intense opposition. They were either carried or supported by 500,133 and craft of all types and almost 11,000 airplanes. They came from southwestern England, southern England, and the east coast of England. It was as if the cities of Green Bay, Racine, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, were picked up and moved-every man, woman, and child, and every automobile and truck-to the east side of Lake Michigan, in one night" (1994, pp. 24-25).

Peter Harris, a reporter for the National Interest, is correct in asserting that the Normandy invasion will forever be etched in the minds of American citizens, as this event profoundly transformed the Second World War, liberated hundreds-of-thousands from tyrannical, megalomaniacal governments, and cemented America's role as the greatest force of hope, opportunity, and freedom, our world has ever known. In elucidating the profound lessons to be learned from Operation Overland, Harris (2017) wrote, "perhaps the greatest lesson of D-Day, then, is this: that both human flourishing and human suffering are critically dependent upon power-politics. Power is not just a tool of state survival. It is the foundation of almost all social structure, shaping what goes on inside states as much as what occurs between them. Today, as power in the international system becomes increasingly diffused, the implications of this lesson are legion" (p. 1). 

We will never forget this epoch-making event of the brave American soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy for a cause greater than their own: freedom from tyranny. 

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